


Imperfection

by FabulaRasa



Category: game of thrones
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:59:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1525490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lord Connington becomes the Hand, Prince Rhaegar has something to say about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperfection

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, I'm not that familiar with the HBO version, having only seen a few episodes. This is based on book canon, and my own headcanon for what was really going on with Lyanna Stark all those years ago.

Lord Jon Connington let the wine wash out the distaste in his mouth. He drank deeply, and when he set the goblet down he fingered the jewels on its rim. There was a missing stone in the back that his fingers liked to find. _This should be repaired, m’lord_ , his steward had said just last night, and Lord Connington had smiled at him. 

_Imperfection, Ronulf_ , he had said. _It’s a salutary reminder of the human condition_. Ronulf had just stared at him blankly, and his lord had sighed. _It means—_

_I know what it means, m’lord, me hairy-faced mum did make me go to school once or twice, back in the day. I just think it’s not fitting, a great lord like you having a dinged-up cup like that’un._

Connington had laughed. And he hadn’t been a great lord, either; old Ronulf was as wry as he was insolent. Well, what a difference the turn of a glass could make. There wasn’t a greater lord in the land right now. 

“Fool,” came the shout at the door, and the bang of metal on wood. “Pus-sucking _fool!_ ”

Well, there might be one lord greater. 

“I know what you’re going to say,” he began. “Believe me, I have already thought about all—”

 _Crack_. The room was as still as his face, his face that still bore his prince’s handmark in lurid outline across the jaw. There was hardly room for rage beneath the shock of it. He found his breath, and _crack_ went the hand across the other side of his face. 

“Touch me again,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Just one more time, I beg you.”

“Do you threaten your prince?” Rhaegar’s breath was inches from his face, and the purple eyes were dark today, clouded with more anger than he had yet seen there. “You dare to think you could raise your hand to me? Go on, let’s try it. Lift but your finger, and I’d slice your hand at the wrist before you even twitched. I may not be a better swordsman, but I am quicker, and in the game of blades, quicker counts for all, my Lord _Hand_.” He spat the title as though it tasted like shit in his mouth. “What in seven fucking hells were you _thinking_ , Jon?”

He drank more wine to steady himself. “Someone has to deal with Robert Baratheon,” he said. “And I don’t mean one of your father’s decrepit parchment-pushers. It’s going to come down to someone with a sword in his hand, because that’s the language Robert understands, not all this diplomacy and reasoning. He’s been itching for a provocation for months now, and thanks to you and that bloody foolery at Harrenhal, he’s got one.”

He hadn’t thought those eyes could get darker today, but he had been wrong. “Don’t you dare mention Lyanna Stark,” Prince Rhaegar murmured. “Don’t you dare to do it. You don't understand the first thing about that, even now.”

“I’m sure that’s true, your highness,” Jon said smoothly. He poured himself another cup of Arbor gold, and let the sweet of it drown the memory of Aerys’s claw on his shoulder, gripping him, fondling him. _You’ll be my new Hand_ , he had said, _my young strong Hand_ , and Jon flinched to think how like the son’s voice the father’s could be, like poisoned silk. There was a tale about that somewhere, something his nurse had read him—about a princess who had put on a beautiful robe that was poisoned, and her skin had burst into flame. She had died screaming in agony as her helpless attendants watched. Nothing like the old wives’ tales for a soothing bedtime story. 

From the chair he had thrown himself into, Rhaegar watched him. “How many days,” he mused, “am I going to be _your highness?_ ” Those long fingers drummed the carved lion on the arm of the chair, one-two-three, one-two-three. The fingers were never still, always touching something—a sword, a lyre, a book. He could close his eyes and see Rhaegar’s fingers encircling the crown of blue roses, just before he placed it on Lyanna’s head. He would close his eyes on his deathbed and see Rhaegar’s hands. And now he was the Hand. Well, that was funny somewhere. 

“You are always my prince,” Jon said evenly. “And I live to serve you.”

“I see. So it’s going to be a lengthy punishment, is it.” Rhaegar was up now, padding restlessly about the room, prowling like an angry lion. Too many damn lions in this room—lions carved on all the chairs, a lion-skin rug on the floor, lions cavorting in the tapestries. The Hands that had replaced Lord Tywin Lannister in these rooms had not bothered to re-decorate, and that was probably wise; none of them had lived long enough to warrant it, anyway. First thing in the morning, he would order the Tower of the Hand cleaned out, and make a great bonfire of all Lannister’s things in the courtyard. Make the blaze large enough to give Aerys a stiff one; the rumor was he needed fire to get it up these days, and he never fucked the Queen so hard as after a good burning. Throwing one of two of his subjects on the flames just made his royal prick pulse harder. And shouldn’t a man his age leave off thinking about fucking? But not Aerys. Even now poor Queen Rhaella was going around with a belly half-dragging to the ground, heavy with Aerys’s latest. 

“You don’t even see what he’s done, do you. Even now, you don’t see it. You don’t see anything that isn’t written on the edge of a sword and shoved under your nose. Don’t you see what he’s done, what you’ve given him?” Rhaegar had stopped at the balcony, the sheer curtains billowing behind him in the evening breeze like Kingsguard cloaks. The guard—there was more to think about. He was going to have to acquire his own men. He couldn’t save the realm if he got stabbed in the throat before he even stepped out of the Red Keep. 

“Yes, your highness, you’ve made it quite clear what you think of my reasoning abilities. Even so, I do manage to wrap my head around the fact the king your father wants me gone from court.” It was Jon’s turn to tap-tap his finger against the table. “With me as Hand, and with the suppression of Baratheon now my responsibility, he knows I’ll have no choice but to take up the command in the Riverlands myself. And with me safely away, he believes he can once more bring you to heel. No more upstart lord from the Stormlands subverting his heir, whispering all that seditious _reform_ nonsense in his head.”

“Fool,” Rhaegar said once again, but softly this time, sadly. “He doesn’t want you gone from court. He wants you dead.”

“For that he has only to light a pyre in Maegor’s Holdfast. Any pretext will do. If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead.”

Rhaegar shook his head. “Not so. Would you believe it, even my father is aware of the popularity of the dashing Lord Connington. He hears the people shout your name in the streets. He hates you for it, but he knows they won’t love him more if he executes you.”

“You’re trying to persuade me Aerys gives a red rat’s fuck who loves him and who doesn’t?”

Rhaegar looked at him oddly—a sidelong, surprised look. “Strange that you shouldn’t know that. Yes, he cares very much. It’s the only thing he wants, really, that people should love him.”

“Well,” Jon said with a bitter laugh, “that’s not hard to do. Just announce that the burnings will continue until the people begin to love him. They’ll be wanking in the streets over Aerys’s picture.”

“You’ve got a filthy mouth,” Rhaegar said, caressingly. He was across the room and breathing back over his shoulder before Jon knew he’d moved. He was always like that—not a lion, no. A shadowcat, prowling just beyond the range of human sight. It wasn’t natural, the prince’s quickness; there was some hidden glamor in his blood, some long-ago Valyrian sorcery swimming in his veins, behind that ripple of silver heir, those fathomless eyes. Rhaegar was lean, and that made warriors on the field or in the tourney lists discount him, until they shattered their shield-hand on that steely strength. The lean blade was the one easiest to slide between your ribs.

“Do I,” Jon said. “Will you strike me again for that?”

“Mayhap I will,” whispered Rhaegar, and used his finger to tilt Jon’s mouth to his. He kissed him up his jaw, and down again, kissed the lingering red marks of his fingers. “Gods, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You frightened me.”

“Frightened you. How did I frighten the brave, the valiant Prince Rhaegar?” But they were empty words, words just to be saying something. As always he was just trying to keep his balance when Rhaegar kissed him. It was like standing on the deck of a spinning cog in an ocean storm, the lightest brush of Rhaegar’s lips, and it was all he could do to hold on, seasick with lust. 

“He’s going to try to have you killed out there.” Rhaegar’s mouth was moving down his neck now, murmuring against his skin. “He’ll make it look like an accident. He’ll be your chief mourner, and it will be the grandest funeral King’s Landing has ever seen. But he will see you dead, one way or the other.”

“Not if I get there first.”

Rhaegar pulled back to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, my lord prince, that the time has come to heal the cancer in this realm. No, don’t look at me like that, I’m not talking about doing harm to your father. He’s sick and he’s mad and he needs help, and if we don’t give it to him, someone else will, but I can tell you what Tywin Lannister’s idea of help looks like. It looks like a knife in the dark, is what it looks like. Rhaegar,” and he caught his prince’s hand in his. “Beloved. Listen to me. You think I spoke recklessly in court today, you think I let your father goad me into taking the Handship, you think I was vainglorious and rash.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course, but not in this. Listen to me. Between the two of us, we can crush Baratheon’s warhammer with our swords, that presents no real difficulty. The man is all bluster and no strategy. Robert Baratheon is not why I accepted the king’s challenge. But after I have dealt with this rebellion, then I can set about the business of remaking the kingdom, with your help. If I can just remake the small council, I can declare Aerys mad, and set him aside with you as Prince Regent. It’s _your_ Hand I aim to be, not Aerys’s. No, listen—listen to me. You know what I’m speaking is truth, you know it’s right, you know it’s time—”

“I know it’s treason.”

“Yes.” Jon leveled his eyes, and didn’t hide them from Rhaegar’s. “Yes, I do know that. So I suppose you must decide. Are you loyal to your father, or loyal to your realm? Because Seven help me, I don’t think you can have both.” 

Rhaegar was examining the cup on the table now, as though it were of great interest. “Less than twelve hours as Hand, before you begin plotting the overthrow of your king,” he mused. “Even for Westeros, that must be some sort of record.”

“Overachieving is a tradition in my family.”

That won him the grave smile he had been hoping for. “One joust at a time, Lord Connington. Let us settle affairs with Robert first, and then. . .then we shall see what we shall see.”

Their fucking that night was fierce and frequent, their groans and shudders louder than they usually allowed. He was in a fury to possess Rhaegar, to ease the sting of those slaps, and he knew Rhaegar was on fire for him, to own him. Funny how a man like Rhaegar, a man so keen to observe all things, could not know this, could not know that he had possessed Jon Connington since that long-ago day they had stood together on the battlement of Griffin’s Roost and surveyed the Connington lands. He had been so eager to impress the prince, and he had been so young he had not even known the name for the fiery thing that burned in his chest and loins when he looked at the prince’s beauty.

And that night. . . that night he had not even known what drove his footsteps to the guest tower where the prince was lodging. He had sunk to his knees beside his prince’s bed and swallowed his cock before he had known he was going to do it.

 _Gods, you beautiful boy_ , he remembered Rhaegar moaning, trying to push him off. _Get off, gods, no, I can’t—_

But he had held on, refusing to be pushed off, and finally Rhaegar’s fingers had slackened, and the shove had changed to a grip, and there had been a hot bitter flood in his mouth that matched the one in his trousers. So clumsy he had been. It had taken Rhaegar to show him how, to slow him, to gentle him. Funny to think, looking back on it now, how young Rhaegar himself had been, though he had seemed so old. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen to Jon’s fifteen, but a man grown already. Growing up in Aerys’s household had a way of putting years on you. 

“Where’s your head?” Rhaegar’s fingers were light on his chest, thrumming, plucking him like a lyre. Pale against the darker tan of his own skin, silver hair against the thick reddish mane all the Conningtons wore. He was muscle and power to Rhaegar’s shadow and light. 

“Do you really think I’m dashing?”

Rhaegar’s silent laugh shook the bed. “The most dashing in all the seven kingdoms. And the most beautiful, man or woman.”

“Yes, it’s me they’ll be crowning at the next tourney.”

Rhaegar raised himself on his elbows. “That again.”

“No, it isn’t. I’m not after you about your women. I know you like a bit of cunt, what is it to me if you like fucking Lyanna Stark?”

“She asked for my help.”

“Did she. What was that like, I wonder? Oh, puissant and noble Prince Rhaegar, can you help a fair damsel? My maidenhead is such a burden to me, cannot you rid me of it?”

Rhaegar didn’t laugh at his jest. “She asked for my help. She came to me and asked me. They’re going to make me marry Robert Baratheon, she said, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“So you said, here’s a plan, why don't I steal you away and lock you in my castle out in the Reach?”

“Yes. I crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty so it would look like I was infatuated with her. It’s an easy matter to abduct a woman when she’s actually abducting herself. Jon. She asked for my help.”

It was Jon’s turn to sit up. “So this wench faces a marriage she doesn’t want. Why doesn’t she tell her lord father she doesn’t want it? Lord Rickard’s an old done man who dotes on his only girl, not some monster. Why did she come to you? And now look, her boneheaded fiancé’s started a cocksucking rebellion, and good men will die because of it. Forgive me if I’m not overcome with sorrow for her plight.”

Rhaegar’s fingers were back at him, tracing his hairline, ghosting touches over the palm of his hand. “She came to me,” he said, “because she is with child.”

The wind left Jon in a rush. “The little slut.”

“Hush. They’re in an impossible situation. They needed my help. I offered it. That’s an end of the matter.”

“They.” Jon frowned. “The Stark girl and her paramour? Who is he, the blacksmith’s boy? Since when did you become the champion of young love?”

“Since I learned what it is to love where I should not.” Rhaegar was kissing his arm now, slow easy kisses, with pauses to study the effect. “And not the blacksmith’s boy, in point of fact. Her lover’s father happens to be a great lord.”

“So why doesn’t he see to his own lady, then?”

“Because his father’s name is Rickard Stark.” 

Jon sat up all the way now. “Seven hells.”

“Exactly.”

“Seven demon-wallowing piss-infested _hells_.”

“Indeed.”

“Lyanna Stark is with child by her own fucking brother?”

Rhaegar stretched luxuriously. “You’ve got the order a bit wrong – technically, Lyanna Stark is with child by fucking her own brother, but yes, that’s the general idea.”

“Brandon, not Eddard, I hope.”

Rhaegar chuckled. “Gods, no. Eddard’s plain as a stick. Try not to look so shocked. It’s the disease that stalks Westeros, our most characteristic vice, this yen of brother for sister, and sister for brother. Across the narrow sea they probably all find us too revolting for words. Targaryens have been doing it since Aegon the Conqueror, and, one suspects, for far longer if the truth be told. What matter if Lyanna and Brandon Stark have fallen prey to the oldest sin in the seven kingdoms?”

“Still,” muttered Jon. “Brazen of them.”

“Is it? My parents are brother and sister. And why exactly do you think Oberyn is always visiting from Dorne, why do you think he and Elia are so close, so closeted together all the time?”

“You’re telling me your own wife and her brother—”

“I don’t know, but I suspect. And I won’t ask, because she does me the great good courtesy of not asking about you, for which I love her well. Even the Lannister twins, surely you’ve heard the rumors about them.”

“Mother preserve us,” Connington said with a frown, though he couldn’t deny the frisson that went through him at mention of the Lannister twins. Golden and gorgeous, the both of them, and the thought of them together. . . he felt a stirring in his groin. 

“Why Jon,” Rhaegar said in a pleasant voice that was anything but, “I do believe you find such talk disturbing. But whatever are you to do? Because clearly you desire me, and yet I myself am the product of just such disgusting perversion as theirs.”

“Stop.” He would not bandy words with Rhaegar; there was no surer way to come out the loser. “I don’t think that. But they won’t like it up north, I can tell you that. Things are different up there.”

“That they are. Which is why she came to me. Her bastard’s going to need a father, and who better than the heir to the seven kingdoms? Hard to find better protection than that. And look, it won’t even be her fault—I carried her off against her will, after all. By the time the songs are written of my deed, I’m sure I will have raped her from sunrise to sunset for nine long months as she screamed to the old gods to save her, save her. Then I release her from her prison, and off home she goes. Too shamed for a decent marriage now, of course. Poor thing, she’ll have to settle for being lady of Winterfell for her unmarried brother all her days. Their child may be known as a bastard, but at least he'll be a Targaryen bastard. Brandon may eventually adopt him, and I can foster him here at court if they like. You see? Lyanna and Brandon get left alone, for the rest of their days together." 

“And what do you get?”

Rhaegar leaned over the side of the bed and poured himself a flagon of wine. “The gratitude of my future subjects, of course.”

“Mm hm. And what do you get?”

Rhaegar brought the jug of wine topside with him. He kicked the sheets down so the candlelight gilded his white skin and the pale silvery thatch at his groin, the slack heaviness of his member. There was still a bit of stickiness on the end of it, and Jon considered licking it off. “Me? I get the north.”

“The north. How do you work that out?”

“Honestly, I thought you were the one claiming you had a head for strategy. Jon, think of it. Lord Rickard’s an old man, he won’t be around much longer. Brandon Stark’s going to be Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North before too long—brash impetuous Brandon, who will be grateful to me and to House Targaryen to the end of his days, and probably his son’s. In one stroke, I bind the north to me forever, and build an unshakeable alliance. Unshakeable, that is, because bound not only by gratitude but by my awareness of certain matters I’m sure the future Lord of Winterfell would rather his bannermen not know. As you say, they take a dim view of human nature up in the north.”

Jon narrowed his eyes. “That’s really quite clever.”

“Isn’t it? And if and when you do get around to this remaking of the kingdom you hold so near and dear, we’re going to need the strength of the north. As it so happens, I have a feeling the north will be answering my call for aid, should there be any resistance to your plan about the regency.”

“All right, that’s diabolically clever.”

“Well.” Rhaegar rested his flagon on the nightstand. “Not so clever as all that, apparently. I didn’t predict Robert Baratheon would make quite so large a fool of himself over the issue of his fiancée. I may have miscalculated there.”

“Leave Robert to me.” Jon hauled his prince over to his side of the bed and draped him back across his chest, a comforting weight. And a hot one. Since the first time they had lain naked together, he had felt it, the hotness of the dragon blood. It thickened his cock just to touch it. He could come just from rubbing against that furnace of a body, and many was the time he had. When they were younger they had played the childish game where Jon closed his eyes and tried to guess when Rhaegar was close to touching him. _Now? Not now. Now? Not now. There!_ And his hand would seize Rhaegar’s. _Caught you again_. It was the heat coming off him, every time, the heat he had been able to feel.

Once, some years ago, Rhaegar had worn all silk to a court event: silk tunic, silk trousers, silk slashed doublet, all in black and scarlet. Rhaenys’s naming, that had been it. He had looked every inch the dragon prince he was on that day, and his eyes had been translucent. And Jon had been eating his heart every minute of the feasting. He had sat at table in the banqueting hall, far down on the benches just to make his point, making a meal of his own entrails and washing it down with wine, hour after hour while the hall rang with Rhaegar’s laughter and Rhaegar’s singing and Rhaegar’s feting of his wife and baby daughter, and Jon had never hated anyone so much as he hated Rhaegar on that wretched day. 

“I would come sit by you,” Rhaegar had said, late in the evening, sliding in beside him on the bench. “But these are my best silks, and I fear me the storm clouds over your head, my dearest storm lord, would ruin them.”

“I am unworthy of such wit, your highness,” Jon had managed through gritted teeth.

“That you are,” Rhaegar said, pouring himself some of his friend’s wine. “I have a daughter, a sweet precious little child, gotten on a good and gentle lady, and I love her. I love them both, after my own fashion, and I pray all the gods my fashion is good enough. Is there no part of your hard angry heart that can be happy for me, or shall I leave you to your tantrum?” And though he spoke lightly, Jon flushed with shame to hear it. 

“I—I apologize, your highness. I should not have come.”

“You should.” Rhaegar’s hand had rested on the inside of his arm, as light as his tone. “I wanted you here, and I did not mean to do you hurt thereby. I only wanted to have all my joys at once, but perhaps a man does not get that in life. Forgive me, my wrathful little griffin.”

Jon swallowed. How did Rhaegar manage it, to melt all his rage away with a few deft words, a brush of fingers? And he had flinched at the touch, almost, because the heat coming off him—it was like nothing he had felt before. It was the silks, it had to be. They contained his fire, distilled it. “Gods, you are scorching,” he had husked, and just like that Rhaegar’s eyes had darkened to violet. 

They had made their way to an antechamber off the hall, with a flimsy door whose bar anyone could have burst, but no one did. The celebration continued in the hall beyond, and the music, and no one was near enough to hear their fevered grunts. “Hot, so hot,” Jon had moaned. And he had flipped his prince over the dusty table and rubbed his cock against those silken trousers and that crack of ass, and almost he had been afraid he would burn his cock. All that silk, all that heat—he had come in a bright flood of furious rubbing, not even reaching a hand around for Rhaegar, who had a hand on himself anyway. 

“Ruined,” Rhaegar had declared afterward, studying the wreckage of his silks, splattered with come fore and aft. “Here, give me yours.”

“You’re mad.”

“No I’m not. I have to go back out there, and you can slip away up a back staircase wearing mine. No, here, this would be better,” Rhaegar said, and he yanked down a musty tapestry to wrap his lover’s bared ass. 

“Blood of the crone,” Jon grumbled. “No telling what I’ve got crawling up me now. If you’ve given me crotch lice, I swear by the Maiden’s tits I’ll cut your hair off in your sleep and use it as my new groin hair.” 

“Cutting Targaryen hair—that’s a hanging offense, that is. Our hair is brushed by fairies every night, and washed in pixie piss. There we are.” Rhaegar was busy stuffing his own ruined trousers behind another curtain and slipping on Jon’s. “A perfect fit,” he proclaimed, which it manifestly wasn’t. They were of a height, but Jon’s build was thicker and a bit longer in the leg; the effect on Rhaegar was slightly clownish.

“I recommend sitting a great deal,” Jon said with a laugh, and Rhaegar’s hand brushed his jaw. 

“There’s my griffin laughter,” he said. “I’ve missed it.” And just like that he was gone, slipping out behind one of the tapestries for an exit Jon hadn’t even known was there. How many times had Rhaegar used this room before? His brows furrowed in suspicion—one more thing to ask him, next time. Or not. The list of things he knew better than to ask Rhaegar was long, and growing longer. 

Jon rolled over in the pre-dawn now, wrapped in his memories and what felt like nine stone of Targaryen leg. “Budge over, you great oaf,” he whispered. He hadn’t thought about the day of Rhaenys’s naming in years. Why would it come to him now? Funny to think how he had hated the little innocent babe, how he had resented her and Rhaegar’s infatuation with her. And now, she would run down the broad hallways of the palace to him almost more than her father or her mother, clamoring to be swept up in his strong arms and paraded about. 

“Lord Connington, you indulge her too much. She’s too big, I fear she will hurt you,” Elia had said just last week when he had swung Rhaenys up onto his shoulders. He had laughed. “My lady, the day a seven year old girl is too much for me, I had best give up my knighthood and melt my sword down for a begging bowl.”

“Or a cane,” Rhaenys suggested gleefully, from her perch atop her knight. “Maester Edwyn has a cane, and it has a silver handle. It’s ever so much lovelier than any old sword. Lord Connington, I order you to melt your sword for a cane, at once.”

“As my lady commands,” Jon said with a sweeping bow that landed Rhaenys in a yelping puddle at his feet. He smiled now to remember it, all Rhaenys’s Targaryen imperiousness, tempered by just enough of her mother’s sweetness. She would make a good queen some day, and mayhap she might even be prevailed on to marry that squalling red-faced bundle tucked in beside her mother even now. Jon rolled over to find Rhaegar’s eyes on him in the dim gray, somehow illuminating the two of them on the bed like great lilac lanterns. The knock at the door made him jump, but Rhaegar only sighed. 

“Enter,” he said, even though it was Jon’s apartment. Jon saw the swirl of Kingsguard cloak before he saw the face of the Lannister boy. Boy wasn’t really fair, though, not any more—he’d become a man in the last year or so, topping Rhaegar even. His eyes darted from one to the other of them, and then quickly down. 

“Your Highness,” he said. “His Grace requests your presence in his rooms at once.”

Rhaegar’s sigh deepened; his father slept rarely, if at all. “Of course he does.” He rose from the bed—from the Lord Hand’s bed—and strode unconcernedly to his clothes on the other side of the room, naked as his name day.

“Ser Jaime,” Jon said. “I fear the prince needs a moment to ready himself. Would you mind stepping outside until he is prepared?”

Jaime Lannister ducked his head in acquiescence, but his eyes followed Rhaegar, and Jon saw the hunger there. “Now, ser,” he added, more firmly, and the lad remembered himself and quickly shut the door behind him.

“Very funny,” he aimed at Rhaegar’s backside. “Would it kill you to put on clothes? That story will be all over King’s Landing by breakfast, and by noon you will have been sucking my cock when the entire Kingsguard broke down the door.”

“No one will believe it.” Rhaegar fastened his doublet, and as always, not a hair was out of place. “You were obviously sucking mine.” He tossed the golden pin of the Hand onto the bed. “There,” he said. “You win. Stick it through your cock for all I care.”

“Might make fucking you a bit awkward.”

“When I’m king, we’ll have a nice golden cock-and-balls made to go with it, and we’ll stick it right next to the hand, so your hand can cup my cock all day long. It would at least be something interesting to look at during council meetings.”

Jon regarded him, and Rhaegar’s gaze back was just as steady, because they had both heard it: the first time Rhaegar had ever allowed himself the words. _When I’m king._

“I leave tomorrow morning for the riverlands,” Jon said, and he read his victory in the set of Rhaegar’s shoulders, his curt nod of acknowledgement.

“May the Warrior guide you,” he said gravely, and Jon smiled.

“The Warrior’s a moon-bleeding woman. My right arm will guide me well enough without the Warrior’s help, but call it the gods if that makes you feel better.”

“Filthy, blaspheming mouth,” Rhaegar whispered as he slipped out the door, and Jon stretched and let the dawn take him.

* * *

Lord Connington shifted now, and poked at the ashes of the fire in his study. Whatever else had happened at Griffin’s Roost in the near-twenty years of his absence, it hadn’t been an improvement in the quality of the servants; his fire had been left to dwindle and die as he sat here through the long night, leafing through pages in long-forgotten books, stirring old memories with the ashes in the grate. 

Funny to think those had been the last words Rhaegar had ever spoken to him. On the morrow he had departed for the riverlands and his command there, and even as he departed King’s Landing, Lord Rickard and Brandon Stark had been arriving in it, to the end none could have foreseen. 

He peeled back the glove and studied the creeping blackness on his fingers. He tried to remember what Rhaegar’s touch on his hand had felt like, and couldn’t. The blackness was advancing faster than he had thought it would, and faster than he had yet seen in others, and while part of him fought grimly for more time to serve young Aegon and win his throne for him, the more part of him was glad of it. Even if death was a nothingness, he would be glad to step into it, and if it were more than that. . . well, he had never believed in the gods, but surely, if they were good, there might be some golden autumn day in the garden of the Red Keep that he could step back into, with Rhaenys practicing her balance-walk on the rim of the fountain, and Elia watching fondly, and Rhaegar. . . he couldn’t even think. Sometimes he couldn’t even see his face, just that blinding silver hair. Not even his own family, any of them, and yet the only family he had ever known. 

Valar morghulis, the Braavosi had it. All men must die.


End file.
